


Magnum Opus

by Shoulderpads



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Metaphors, Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27279523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoulderpads/pseuds/Shoulderpads
Summary: “Vanitas-a symbolic work of art showing the the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death.”The sculptor raised his chisel above the block of marble prone before him. It gleamed in the desert sun, whites and grays and flecks of black. The sculptor went to work, extracting his greatest piece. The marble gasped, arched, and fell back down. Scraps.Across the way, the Magnum Opus rose, stretching out from inky ichor. He stood, vantablack without definition or face.My piece from “The Shadow You Cast” charity zine!
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Magnum Opus

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween guys! What are you getting up to for the holiday on this hell year? Looking at the moon I hope!
> 
> This is basically just an excuse to wax poetically about art lol. It’s not my usual fare, but inspiration took me, so hopefully you like extended metaphors and flowery language!

The sculptor raised his chisel above the block of marble prone before him. It gleamed in the desert sun, whites and grays and flecks of black. The sculptor went to work, extracting his greatest piece. The marble gasped, arched, and fell back down. Scraps. 

Across the way, the Magnum Opus rose, stretching out from inky ichor. He stood, vantablack without definition or face. 

The artist smiled, cracked lips stretching to reveal the top row of teeth. 

The marble scraps remained in the dirt, motionless and discarded as the dusty wind blew. 

—

The artist’s chisel sunk into the Magnum Opus. While his greatest work yet, the Magnum Opus was not complete. He was but a draft of something stronger. The chisel’s teeth caught on flesh and tore, the toe of a boot cracked bones like kiln cracked clay. The artist chipped away at weaknesses, molding his masterpiece into perfection over four years of tireless toil. 

Still, the Magnum Opus picked himself out of the dirt and followed his artist. The best art came from a place of pain after all. He did as the artist depicted, confined to the gold frame he’d been given. As a work of vanitas, he knew life was fleeting. Pleasure was futile and frivolous. It could not be achieved, at least not by him, and those who surrounded themselves in ostentatious luxury would fade and leave their pride behind. His end was certain, better to cease and assimilate than to live in vain. He had but one goal in mind that the artist spurred him towards. Return to the ink well he was drawn from. 

With every step, puddles of pigment pooled at this feet, impressions of emotions pulling themselves up and skittering this way and that, still glossy and wet. Orange burned molten from his fingertips to his head in rage, fear fanned out green and white from his ribs. The frustration that itched at his back and made his scalp fuzzy rippled off in violet. Sickly yellow stretched from his half baked heart in jealousy, paired with the peach alienation that congealed from all sides. Pink suffocated him as nauseating sea foam lodged in his throat. Sadness poured in a flood of deep blue just as the anxiety that chittered up his arms. Red ran with pain, and gray dribbled from exhaustion when his efforts drove him to his knees. 

The Magnum Opus shivered at their exit. They wrecked havoc where they went, smearing shadows on any medium they saw fit. He flinched when their canvases were cut by the same tools that gave him shape. 

He pressed shaken fingers to the glass framework that covered the portrait stained to his visage. It wasn’t a perfect copy. His hair remained black in harmony with the rest of his scheme, and his ochre eyes shown so differently than the crystalline phthalos that faced him down with cold fire. 

—

Failure hurt. He’d slipped back into the steady block of marble he once was, only he had retained the driver’s seat. It had felt so natural, so picturesque and _good_. Negative space was filled, a balance returning to their piece. He wore his old face like a glove. But it didn’t last. 

They’d become different materials, the Magnum Opus and his counterpart. They didn’t work together any more. Like bleeding pen lines against watercolors or paper pilling and melting under acidic nibs. Thinner against oils paint. They fought, complimentary reds and greens clashing until they were as faded and dull as the dust beneath their boots. 

The Magnum Opus was lost. The model of his figure study hidden away from the world. And time had forgotten them, spare their faces. 

—

The Magnus Opus was pulled from obscurity and fitted with a new varnish that protected him from the shadows that previously ate at him. He was restored in new brilliance and reframed, boxed in tighter than ever before. 

Yet, he acted out, staring at his portrait. Hatred flared for the stolen face that housed the missing piece of his painting. The hate bubbled past his lips in a giant blot of oily ink, tenebrous and splattered against the floor and factory walls. Malformed hands, the hardest piece of anatomy to recreate, launched from the ground, weeping black and reaching for what was his. The portrait cut it down and the Magnum Opus’s scream echoed in his helmet as he reabsorbed the dead mass. 

The lights flickered. 

The Magnum Opus went to face the portrait himself, shoes stamping his path with charcoal residue. When they met face to face, his loathing simmered. He could feel the missing piece just below the surface. He almost believed he could reach out and take it, end this suffering. He gripped his weapon, twisted metal work flashing under the overhead lights. He’d have it, he’d take it and be a complete piece, finished at last. 

The portrait crumpled, feeling the pull. His companions jumped to his aid, but they’d do nothing as the Magnum Opus carved until he found the sculpture deep inside. He raised his weapon, his own chisel, and advanced. 

But it wasn’t meant to be. 

Strong hands tossed him through a new frame. 

—

The Magnum Opus fell. His portrait and figure stood above him. The dust whistled through the wind as the portrait offered him something else beyond his frame. He couldn’t do that. He refused. They left him kneeling in his birthplace. 

He curled up on the rocky ground and stared at the sky beyond the plateaus that boxed him in. Some time later, the sky lit up in symbols and wavering colors that made him ill. Then he felt it. 

The artist was gone. 

The gold frame cracked apart and leaked from his eyes. The overbearing presence of the artist left his shoulders and made him shudder. Death of the artist. What was he now? Without meaning or direction, what was he now?

The figure study came back and offered his hand. He said the Magnum Opus could be anything he wanted now. He could chose his path unbidden of his master. It was a daunting idea. 

The eyes of the others crowded him and looked. The portrait was gone, but it didn’t matter. They watched and waited. What would he do? What would he become? It was now up to those around him to interpret his meaning and actions without the artist to dictate them. 

He looked to the sky and wondered what he should be now. 

Perhaps a shadow puppet. An image reflecting the shape of hands bleached in light but forming its own image, lifelike and beautiful in its own right. 

Yes, that sounded right.


End file.
